Balachandran V's "Mornings, at Six," signed from Trivandrum and dated 25 April 2009, makes a quiet claim: before the day's troubles get going, there is a short stretch of time when the world is simply kind. The poem doesn't argue the point. It lets a morning unfold, sound by sound, until the claim feels earned.
It begins with a condition: "If you had a good night's sleep." That opening is easy to skip past, but it matters. The happiness described isn't guaranteed, and the poem knows it. The speaker lies "eyes half-open" while the darkness is "Paling," and the light arrives filtered through the leaves of the Jack and the Mango, "just enough light / So that your eyes do not hurt." Even the light is gentle. The writing is gentle too, since the sentence drifts down the page across line breaks the way a half-awake mind drifts. Notice that Jack, Mango and Robin are capitalised, as though the trees and birds were neighbours with names.
The second stanza turns from sight to sound, and here the poem is most playful. "Sweet tweet" is nearly a nursery rhyme, with its echoing vowel and the chirp built into the words. Then comes the best image in the poem: the cuckoos, "so flustered, / Plaintive, like mothers in kitchen / Scurrying about in the morning." The bird's call becomes domestic and slightly harried, and the comparison is affectionate rather than mocking. Then the crows, "omnipresent," intrude with their harsh caws, and the speaker's generosity stretches to include them: "One will love even the crows / On such a morning." The dash before that line creates a small pause, as if the speaker is surprised by his own mellowness.
The third stanza is the emotional centre. The poem names what usually weighs on a person: "Bitterness of yesterdays, / Burdens to carry today / Bleakness of the future." The heavy repeated *b* sounds make the list feel like a stack of stones, and it covers past, present and future, so nothing is left unburdened. Yet the poem doesn't pretend these troubles vanish. Its phrasing is careful: "For a gentle moment, all pains are gone." The word "moment" admits the relief is temporary, which makes it more believable. Curtains flutter and hymns "waft in," and the verbs are soft, almost weightless.
Then the poem changes pace. The pronoun shifts from the general "you" to a personal "I," and the scene becomes comic. We hear "soft taps / Of his nails" before we see anyone, which is a clever way of letting sound do the work. Though the poem never says "dog," the nails, the "wet slurps, soft whines" and the "nuzzling on the ears" make it clear enough. Tommy approaches politely, but then "the door is rudely pushed open" as Sancho comes "barging in, / Ahead of his father." The humour is warm, since the son jumps the queue and the father trails behind. After the serenity of the earlier stanzas, this burst of clumsy affection is a welcome jolt.
The poem is written in free verse, with no rhyme scheme and no regular beat. The lines are short and conversational and rely on natural speech rhythm. The one rhetorical question, "What could be a better way / To begin a day?", sounds less like a challenge than a contented sigh. The poem could have stopped there, but it adds a two-line coda: "The telephone rings – / My love, to say hello." There is no exclamation mark and no comment. The speaker moves quietly from the dogs' affection to a person's, and the poem ends on the small, ordinary fact of being thought of.
What makes the poem worth reading is its restraint. It would be easy to write about happiness in grand language. Instead, Balachandran lists what is actually there: light through leaves, a flustered cuckoo, a wet nose, a phone call. Its modest suggestion is that contentment isn't a distant prize but something already waiting at six in the morning, if we are rested enough, and still enough, to notice it.